Ten fixes Marion County Jail could make—now

The Marion County Jail is shown at the Marion County Sheriff’s Office in Ocala, Fla. on Monday, Dec. 28, 2020. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2020.

Marion County does not lack evidence that the operation of its jail needs urgent reform. In recent years, our newsroom has documented preventable suffering and deaths among those being held behind those walls—people including Scott Whitley, Maniesa Fletcher, Jacob Oakie, Juan Miranda-Valentín, Dennis DiGenova and Mayra Ramirez. Surveillance video, medical files, and state reports tell a consistent story: policy on paper isn’t protecting people in custody, and the jail’s death rate has far outstripped national norms.

This is not only about humane treatment promised under our U.S. Constitution. The failure endangers the public—not just people behind bars.

Consider Kendra Boone, whose family sought help for her as she experienced a mental-health crisis the night before she allegedly stole a sheriff’s cruiser and crashed it on Feb. 1, 2024, killing herself and three innocent people. Her parents called the Marion County Sheriff’s Office for help the night before; Boone left before deputies arrived. At the press conference after the incident, instead of using that tragedy to talk candidly about how often deputies confront untreated illness with too few options, Sheriff Billy Woods emphasized Boone’s criminal record and called her “a moron” while insisting the deputy “did absolutely nothing wrong.” That may express frustration, but it didn’t address the gap that put Boone—and the public—at risk. We need an actual continuum of care, not post-hoc blame.

We understand it must be difficult for law enforcement to toggle between being tough on crime and needing to take care of an inmate’s needs. Too often, records reflect people in crisis are stabilized with force instead of care, and then returned to our neighborhoods sicker, traumatized or not returned at all. Here’s a key point for everyone to remember: Most of the people in the jail, and certainly all of the in-custody deaths we’ve covered thus far- are not serving a sentence. Instead, they are people who have been arrested but who have not yet had their day in court. What happens to them affects every family, every roadway, every business.

Ten actions that will save lives and reduce liability

1) Put body-worn cameras on detention deputies—and use them.
Sumter County has them; other Florida and federal detention operations do, too. Publish activation, auditing, retention and public-release rules. (Our position hasn’t changed: cameras protect the public and good officers alike.)

2) Restore and publish compliance reporting—monthly.
After our reporting revealed that those in MCSO tasked with overseeing the jail ended routine compliance reporting that tracked whether the medical services contractor – Heart of Florida  — met Florida Model Jail Standards, the public’s key means of tracking the quality of the care provided under HOF’s $14 million contract vanished. Reinstate those reports, rehire and support the efforts of the medical liaison who sounded the alarm for years. Whistleblower allegations and public records show these compliance snapshots stopped after the sheriff ended the position of the medical liaison for the jail. The job had been held by Mary Coy, a whistleblower whose reports shed light on the perceived shoddy treatment of prisoners in the jail.

3) Ditch the carbon-copy sick-call slips. Go electronic.
Right now, tracking medical requests means chasing paper. Move to a basic electronic request/triage log that timestamps intake, nurse review, treatment and escalation. Leadership should be able to see, at a glance, whether standards are being met without digging through binders.

4) Audit outside medical costs and incentives in the Heart of Florida contract.
The current contract requires HOF to cover the cost of emergency and hospital care, yet detailed billing has not been produced to the public. Post-booking ER transports plummeted to less than half their historical levels in 2023 and remained low in 2024. If a payment structure discourages timely hospital transfers, fix it. Publish quarterly costs for inmate care.

5) Make mortality/morbidity reviews independent—and specific.
Put an outside physician and at least two community members on every death-review committee. Current internal reviews lack timelines and granular analysis, which undercuts their credibility. In Fletcher’s case, the committee found “no policy concerns” despite substantial warning signs elsewhere. Independent eyes and real timelines should be the rule, not the exception.

6) Expand mental-health court and end “video-only” appearances for inmates involved in jail use-of-force incidents.
People in the jail who have been found mentally incompetent—or who are determined to be on that path—sit for months, often in segregation, receive an inordinate amount of all use of force, and only appear by video in court. Bring them into a real courtroom, where judges and defense counsel can see their condition and intervene earlier with treatment, diversion or hospitalization.

Marion County Mental Health Court is highly effective in diverting the mentally ill from jail and the criminal records that will impede them from being productive members of society. Providing the program with increased funding and expanding who qualifies will allow it to continue to prevent more offenders from entering a deadly cycle they can’t get out of.

7) Confront the pattern: force is landing on people in crisis.
Whitley—a diagnosed schizophrenic—was beaten by six jail guards, and shocked with a Taser 27 times (one was tasing at his neck and the other at Whitley’s groin) within 12 minutes and died. The medical examiner ruled Whitley’s death a homicide; however, no one has been charged with murder in the case. Our review of case files and disability rights complaints shows the people most likely to be hurt are frequently mentally ill or developmentally disabled. A jail is not a hospital—and force cannot be a substitute for care.

We reviewed all use-of-force reports at the jail for the first half of this year and found consistent patterns that led to the use of force. An overwhelming majority of those incidents came from inmates refusing to submit to strip searches, particularly by those with obvious mental deficiencies.

8) Build a real reentry bridge for high-need, low-functioning adults.
When cases stem from psychosis, missed medications or Baker Act-level crises, reentry needs to start on day one. Medication continuity, guardianship or case-management referrals, SSI/Medicaid reinstatement, housing coordination and warm handoffs to community providers must all be part of the process. Use the jail’s treatment apparatus to stabilize at-risk people, if necessary, not to keep spinning the revolving door.

9) Give prosecutors and defense counsel every jail incident and disciplinary report—automatically.
If a person who cannot understand the rules is being sentenced to 30 days in lockdown by a jail board disciplinary committee, that is mitigation and due-process material the court must see. Could the jail make these records automatically available to the court system for monitoring? It’s alarming to us that we could find no one in our local system tasked with this job, which explains why so many are getting hurt.

10) Enforce the sheriff’s own code of conduct and rule of law—even in the jail.
In Whitley’s case, the “Gazette’s” lawsuit forced the sheriff to allow us to view surveillance video, which contradicted initial claims that Whitley was noncompliant. No officer has been charged in the homicide. If six private citizens treated Whitley, a vulnerable adult, the way the corrections officers did, they could have been charged with murder. How can the sheriff maintain his tough-on-crime stance with a straight face if it only applies to those who do not wear the MCSO uniform?

We’ll urge the same standard State Attorney Bill Gladson invoked when MCSO officials sought to criminalize lawful news reporting by the “Gazette”: “I’ve read the statute, it’s very clear. Nobody is above the law,” he threatened the newspaper by email last year. We ask Gladson to apply that principle to the use of force and medical neglect of vulnerable people in the jail with the same vigor.

The public-safety payoff

Fixing the jail’s medical and behavioral-health failures can help reduce violent crises in the community, lower recidivism rates, and prevent tragedies like the Boone crash by creating off-ramps before people spiral.

The go-to argument by the sheriff and others is cost; and, yes, doing the right thing costs money. But consider the savings of time and money that will come when deputies do not need to spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with cases of people in mental health crisis, situations they are not fully trained to handle.

It will also cut liability costs that ultimately land on taxpayers and restore confidence among families who are trying—often desperately—to get help for a loved one before something goes wrong and people are hurt.

Marion County can lead Florida here: put cameras on the people with keys; track care in real time; open the books; bring independent experts into the room; get people in crisis before a judge who can actually see them; and hold everyone to the same standards.